Smithsonian Global

Protecting the World’s Treasures. Asking Big Questions. Tackling the Future’s Challenges.You may know us at Smithsonian for our museums and collections, but we’re also a global organization actively involved in conserving biodiversity, priceless art, and much more.

Discover the difference we’re making in communities around the world.

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Smithsonian Global

Discover the difference we're making in communities around the world.

Protecting the World’s Treasures. Asking Big Questions. Tackling the Future’s Challenges. You may know us at Smithsonian for our museums and collections, but we’re also a global organization actively involved in conserving biodiversity, priceless art, and much more.

Our Work

Smithsonian Approach

Our projects foster international collaboration and bring together governments, foundations, and the world’s leading thinkers and scientists. We bridge disciplines and borders, whether helping to save endangered species, rescuing art from the rubble, or inspiring tomorrow’s scientists and leaders. We ask tough questions. We take bold action. And we make the world a better—and better-informed—place.

Science and Conservation

From saving endangered species to monitoring marine environments, Smithsonian conducts research on the frontiers of science. We harness the best researchers in the world to promote healthy ecosystems, conserve biodiversity, and find ways to predict and mitigate global climate change.

Culture and the Arts

Smithsonian celebrates and promotes artistic and cultural diversity and works to ensure that this diversity will continue to thrive for future generations. Our teams protect cultural heritage at risk, support established and emerging artists, and encourage cultural sustainability.

Public Engagement

We create educational resources and programs that ignite curiosity and wonder in people of all ages. Through our museums, research centers, workshops, virtual classrooms and educational labs, we offer opportunities to engage students, teachers, and educational leaders worldwide.

Our Work

From saving endangered species to monitoring marine environments, Smithsonian conducts research on the frontiers of science. We harness the best researchers in the world to promote healthy ecosystems, conserve biodiversity, and find ways to predict and mitigate global climate change.

Smithsonian celebrates and promotes artistic and cultural diversity and works to ensure that this diversity will continue to thrive for future generations. Our teams protect cultural heritage at risk, support established and emerging artists, and encourage cultural sustainability.

We create educational resources and programs that ignite curiosity and wonder in people of all ages. Through our museums, research centers, workshops, virtual classrooms and educational labs, we offer opportunities to engage students, teachers, and educational leaders worldwide.

American Spaces Reassessment and Design Project

Through the American Spaces Assessment and Redesign Project, Smithsonian experts in education, exhibition design, and public engagement are working with the State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs to help connect international audiences with American culture and values at more than 700 locations worldwide.

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American Spaces Worldwide

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Countries with American Spaces

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Site Visits to and Virtual Consultations with American Spaces Sites by Smithsonian Content, Design, and Training Experts Since 2011

Slave Wrecks Project

With the Slave Wrecks Project, the Smithsonian and a group of international partners seek to bring greater awareness to the study of sunken slave ships and build capacity for research and education in the field of maritime archaeology.

Panama Canal Project: Fossils and Global Change

When Smithsonian paleobotanist Carlos Jaramillo learned that Panama was expanding its canal in 2006 and blasting 100 million tons of rock to do so, he knew he had to move fast to access all of the fossils that this blasting could uncover. Carlos’ research from this site has led to a new understanding of how species spread across the Americas.

Traveling "Beyond Bollywood" to India

In 2014, the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center’s exhibition Beyond Bollywood: Indian Americans Shape the Nation traveled to New Delhi, Goa, Chennai, and Kolkata in India, in partnership with the U.S. Department of State. This touring exhibition was a part of the U.S. government’s cultural diplomacy efforts in India, opening conversations and breaking down stereotypes to help build closer relationships between the peoples of these two countries.

Haiti Cultural Recovery Project

After the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Smithsonian worked with a wide array of dedicated, caring professionals from around the world to support the recovery of damaged and at risk Haitian cultural heritage.

Harnessing Reproductive Science to Save Cheetahs

Smithsonian scientist Adrienne Crosier created a first-of-its-kind cheetah biobank of genetic material in Namibia. Working with local Namibian students and the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), led by former Smithsonian Research Fellow Laurie Marker, Adrienne and our international partners are able to increase genetic diversity of the cheetah population.

Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO)

For more than three decades, scientists at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) have been monitoring the atmosphere and studying ozone, greenhouse gases, and air pollution. Now, with funding from NASA, SAO is developing the first space-based instrument to continuously monitor air pollution across North America.

Conserving Eld's Deer in Myanmar

Through long-term engagement and partnership in Myanmar, scientists at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute are working to ensure the future of the Eld’s deer and conservation of its habitat.

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Eld's Deer Remaining in the Wild

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Year of the First Eld's Deer Birth From a SCBI-developed In Vitro Fertilization Process

Cerro Ballena

In 2011, Smithsonian paleontologists heard rumors of a large number of marine fossils while working in the Atacama Region of Chile. This site, Cerro Ballena, or “whale hill” in Spanish, contained the skeletons of more than 40 whales and other marine mammals.

Supporting Museums in Oman

In 2010, Smithsonian collaborated with the Sultanate of Oman and the Omani Ministry of Heritage and Culture to transform the Oman Natural History Museum into a powerful educational and scientific resource. Smithsonian and Omani staff developed a master plan for the museum, including a mission and vision, staffing plan, collections management plan, and an organizational plan.

Agua Salud

The Agua Salud Project at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama studies how degraded landscapes can be efficiently transformed into productive secondary forests, timber plantations, natural water utilities or eco-friendly livestock ranches. Agua Salud continues a 100-year old partnership between Smithsonian and Panama. This collaborative relationship began in 1910, with the Panama Biological Survey.

Science for Monks

Smithsonian works with the Sager Foundation and the Exploratorium to build science capacity in Tibetan monastic communities through the Science for Monks program. The program fulfills a mandate from His Holiness the Dalai Lama to create a mutually beneficial dialogue between Tibetan Buddhist practices and modern science.

Celebrating and Sustaining Cultural Diversity in Colombia

For more than 10 years, Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (CFCH) has worked with artisans, local communities, and the Colombian government to document and celebrate the great diversity and beauty of Colombia’s intangible cultural heritage, or living culture.

Arctic Crashes Project: Yakutat Harbor Seals

The Smithsonian’s Arctic Crashes project is an international collaborative study exploring the history of polar animal fluctuations and the shifting scientific, cultural, and public interpretations of human-animal interactions in the Arctic.

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Countries with 28 Arctic Crashes Research Sites

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International Researchers From Disciplines Including Anthropology, Archaeology, History

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute marine biologist Hector M. Guzman used satellite tracking data to compare the movement of humpback whales in Panama’s Las Perlas Archipelago with the courses of hundreds of container and tanker ships over the course of six seasons.

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+ Humpback Whales Gather to Breed in the Gulf of Panama Each Year

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+ Whales in the Gulf of Panama Tagged with Satellite Transmitters to Compare Their Movements with the Known Courses of 1000 Ships

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% Estimated Reduction in Whale-Ship Interactions in the Gulf of Panama Through Implementation of Restricted Shipping Lanes

Smithsonian Tree Banding Project in Gabon

In 2013, with the help of Hervé Memiaghe, a Gabonese forest ecologist who traveled to the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) to learn to use dendrometers in his research, two middle schools in Gabon, Africa joined other schools around the globe to contribute to the project.

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Schools and Institutions Participated in the Smithsonian Tree Banding Project

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Students are Monitoring 12 Trees in a Forest Near a Research Plot in Gamba, Gabon Using $2 Tree Bands

Healthy Reefs for Healthy People

Smithsonian scientist Melanie McField leads Healthy Reefs for Healthy People, a multi-institutional effort to support conservation of the Mesoamerican Reef by tracking its health and making recommendations to policymakers in order to effect real, positive change for the health of the reef.

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+ Partners Working to Maintain and Improve the Health of the MAR and Support the Communities who Depend on it

UV Effects on Phytoplankton

Smithsonian researcher Patrick Neale and his lab at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center are studying UV impacts on phytoplankton in the Antarctic oceans to help create models of how phytoplankton respond in various scenarios of climate change.

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Percent of the World’s Oxygen is Produced by Marine Plants like Phytoplankton

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to 50 Percent of Human-Produced Carbon Dioxide May be Absorbed by the Ocean Carbon Cycle

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Samples of Suspended Phytoplankton are Simultaneously Irradiated to Look at UV Impacts in a Smithsonian-Invented Device

Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Partnership with the Al-Nayzak Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Program (STEP)

Turquoise Mountain

Six Afghan artisans, graduates of Kabul’s Turquoise Mountain Institute, came to Smithsonian’s Freer|Sackler museum throughout 2016 as artists-in-residence showcasing their skills and allowing visitors to experience Afghanistan’s living cultural heritage.

Smithsonian and the Iraqi Institute for the Conservation of Antiquities and Heritage

Since 2015, Smithsonian experts have been working with Iraqi cultural heritage professionals to support the recovery and preservation of Iraq’s cultural heritage sites at the Iraqi Institute for the Conservation of Antiquities and Heritage in Erbil.